A database is a collection of stored data that is logically related. A popular type of database is provided by the relational database management system (RDBMS), which includes relational tables made up of rows and columns. Data stored in the relational tables are accessed or updated using database queries submitted to the database system.
Evolving database technology has enabled the storage of vast amounts of data. Data warehousing is one database application in which a large amount of data may need to be stored in a database system. For example, a business may desire to store historical data pertaining to business activities, such as sales receipts, orders, inventory levels, customer names, purchasing habits, and so forth. As time goes on, the amount of accumulated data can become quite large. Adding physical resources (in terms of additional storage capacity and processing capacity) to a database system is rather expensive.
One solution that has been proposed for reducing the amount of actual data that has to be physically maintained in a database system is the use of interpolation as a technique for compressing data. One interpolation technique is the temporal interpolation technique, in which data at some sampled time intervals are stored, with temporal interpolation used to obtain or estimate data between the time intervals. However, conventional interpolation techniques in database systems suffer from various shortcomings that reduce user convenience and/or database system performance.